


Cosmic Love

by notabadday



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-13 19:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 19,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5714419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notabadday/pseuds/notabadday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A '4,722 Hours' AU where Fitz goes through the portal with Jemma.</p><p>
  <i>In her attempt to escape her peril, Jemma's eyes register Fitz with such a fleeting look of terror that no thought can register in his mind before he is prompted to action, rushing towards her in fearless, thoughtless desperation. He grabs her, his fingers clutching hers like a vice clamping down, disabling the universe's ferocious attempt to break them apart. He holds on. He holds on and begs for a miracle.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Me and you, maybe we could eat somewhere else. Somewhere nice,” Fitz says, hoping anxiously that this clarification will be enough, that she won’t need it spelling out any further.

 “Oh.” A sudden bashfulness creeps in to signal Jemma’s acceptance.

 “Good.” And by that he means _thank God_. “Well, you should come find me when you’re finished here and I’ll start working on options to run by you… for that.” Fitz turns on his heels too fast for her to thwart his hasty retreat.

 Though he disappears, closing the door behind him, he lingers on the other side with too much adrenaline coursing through his veins to know what to do with himself. He can’t seem to take another step. One inevitable side effect of having left her company – an urgent action, necessitated by his fast fading ability not to crumble to dust before her very eyes – is that he is suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling of missing her. It’s as though the elastic tie connecting them is stretched to its limit, pulling him back and threatening to snap.

 He reopens the door and steps back into the room with her. No plan.

 Jemma’s back is turned to him. He catches a noticeable jaunt in her stride as she moves closer to the glass-encased monolith. Its presence has a feeling of ornamental impotence. The magic of what has just passed between these old friends outshines all around it so as to render the otherworldly stone as ordinary as a pebble. The world has shifted out of focus. There's her and there's him and there's the blur around them, containing them much the same as the glass that encases that ancient alien stone.

 Abruptly, before Fitz even has chance to announce his return, the monolith declares its potency in a cruel act of kidnap so swift and smooth that Fitz can barely believe he's not dreaming. Pouring out of the glass door, the monolith knocks Jemma down before pursuing her with furious intent until she is caught in its heavy wave. In her attempt to escape her peril, Jemma's eyes register Fitz with such a fleeting look of terror that no thought can register in his mind before he is prompted to action, rushing towards her in fearless, thoughtless desperation. He grabs her, his fingers clutching hers like a vice clamping down, disabling the universe's ferocious attempt to break them apart. He holds on. He holds on and begs for a miracle.

 Fitz and Jemma are lost in a dizzying haze for only a second before the portal spits them out onto a hard, blue dusty surface. They hit the ground together with a mercilessly violent landing.

 Fitz is knocked half-unconscious but, slightly more alert, Jemma rushes to her feet to helplessly chase the disappearing portal. She begins digging through the dust with her hands, screaming and crying in visceral panic, before looking back to where a dazed Fitz is only beginning to sit up.

 She scrambles to her feet again and rushes to him. Jemma crashes clumsily into his lap and, his consciousness returning fully, he pulls her to him with a hand on her back. She repeats his name, over and over again, like it’s a mantra, like it will save them – perhaps just her. Her voice tires of relentless, coarse cries and forces her to a croaky whisper. “Fitz, Fitz, Fitz…” she continues repeating, broken and breaking, while he says nothing, only holds her.

 After only a brief despairing interlude, Jemma composes herself in Fitz’s arms. There’s no use expending energy on indulgent cries, she reasons once reason has re-entered her equation. She pulls her phone out of her back pocket to check its status only to read: “GPS satellites not found.” She shows Fitz. He looks only briefly at the screen before scanning their surroundings, inspecting the barren blue wasteland for some glimmer of hope to counterbalance their tremendous misfortune. She follows suit, eyes dancing over dusty dunes, looking for a sign – any sign of life, or hope, or, preferably, directions to 34 Bramley Road, Sheffield.

 In a dry breath, she desperately asks no one in particular (and certainly not Fitz, _her Fitz_ , who followed by choice), “Where the hell are we?” Jemma doesn’t look at him, doesn’t want to imply the expectation of an answer, knowing how much he’d hate to disappoint her. It’s not his fault, nor his responsibility, but he’d carry it anyway.

  

_**0 hours** _

 

Standing side by side, they lock eyes, steeling themselves before charging at the steep mound that they can only hope conceals greenery and water and humanity. They are three quarters of the way up, perfectly in stride with each other, before Fitz loses his footing and falls hard. Jemma flinches at the noise that escapes him as he collides with the ground before reaching back for him, helping Fitz to his feet as they both stumble up the final ascent hand-in-hand.

 The summit reveals none of their hopes. This new vantage point only unveils the length and breadth of their wilderness, its hostility stretching out as far as the eye can see.

 The most terrifying revelation that their new view affords them is not of the endless barren land. It sits in the sky, looming above them as beautiful as it is impossible. One moon, small and unimposing and ordinary (if not a little too close for comfort), and another, the exact opposite: further away but so large it threatens to collide with whichever planet – certainly not Earth, it’s become undeniably apparent – they’re stranded on.

 Breathless from their climb, Jemma quietly says, “No. It’s not possible.”

She feels Fitz squeeze her hand.

 

**_6 hours_ **

 

“Everything will be fine. Proper protocol for agents lost in the field: remain in position, wait for extraction,” Jemma repeats to herself for what must be close to the millionth time as she paces circles around the former site of the portal.

 Fitz is watching her, observing her uncharacteristic agitation with concern. She has spent most of the six hours since they were thrown onto this godforsaken planet systematically making ceaseless notes for the purposes of scientific examination. Perhaps she thinks that will save them, perhaps she thinks something can.

 “Alternating matter transportation device. A portal. Quite remarkable really. We’ve been transported to an unknown planet.” As she reviews their situation, the forced pep he can hear in her tone makes her sound like a vacation guide attempting to extract the positives in the middle of a rainstorm. “A different solar system.”

 “At least the air is breathable. Oxygenated,” he notes, sympathetic to her struggle for hope.

 “Gravity seems to be slightly stronger,” Jemma continues, before warmly adding, “or I’m very tired.”

 “It’s the gravity.”

 “The terrain is… barren, desert-like.” She scrutinizes her surroundings with a cool, scientific manner to impede any real emotion from creeping in. “Although conditions seem favorable for terrestrial organisms, there’s no immediate sign of life. Nor any vegetation or water.” She stops abruptly at that, its frightening implications seeming to dawn on her.

 Fitz and Jemma exchange a look that tells her he’s already reached the place of terror in his mind that she is only now circling. The fear in his eyes and the tremor of his lip as he looks up at her prompts her to reassure him, “It will open again, Fitz. They’ll find a way. After all, we’re going for dinner.”

 That brings a smile. The kind of smile that only hours earlier they had coyly hidden from one another. In six hours, neither one of them has come close to smiling and now, in the safety of their bubble, they gaze at each other with broad grins brightening their expressions and forget the merciless world that’s abducted them. They’re going for dinner.

 Jemma takes out her phone again as though to check again for signal, and for reasons he doesn’t have worked out, Fitz suggests, “Save the battery. Never know what it might be useful for. Besides, won’t do much good now.”

 She acquiesces. 

 

**_13 hours_ **

 

They sit cross-legged, leaning into one another, guarding the mark that Jemma’s made of the portal site. They take turns to theorize their rescue. It comforts them to imagine Daisy using her powers to save them, and Bobbi examining the monolith’s properties to ascertain the portal’s exit point, and Coulson warmly saying something like, “We’d hate to lose you.” If they haven’t survived worse, they’ve certainly survived close to it. No reason to surrender optimism just yet.

 “We should get some sleep,” Fitz suggests, feeling the weight of her relaxing into him with a limpness that’s easy to diagnose. She moans her agreement before he moves to change positions, allowing her to move with him without ever losing contact.

 Jemma shifts closer, as close as possible, curling around his flat body with her head resting on his chest. He moves an arm up behind his head to act as a pillow.

 “You comfortable?” he asks, genuine concern behind his rather ridiculous question.

 She gives a snort, a dreamy chuckle escaping her in its wake. “Goodnight, Fitz,” she whispers, her voice a delicate and measured reassurance.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the encouragement! I hope you enjoy this chapter, and what I have planned...

**_22 hours_ **

 

When Jemma wakes up, it’s as though no time has passed at all but for the aching hollowness of her stomach. The sky remains that same midnight blue, no sign of morning. She wonders if perhaps she’s slept a full day, missed out on daylight altogether, but she knows better.

 “How long are the nights on this planet?” she moans drowsily, pulling herself to sit upright for a look at Fitz.

 “There’ll be a sunrise eventually. There has to be,” he reassures her, mustering a sweet smile to dutifully take his turn supplying them with some much-needed optimism. It’s forced and tired but his attempt warms her and she lies back down against him, resetting her head on his chest.

 Her shift in position allows the truth of his mindset to settle on his face. He resumes biting his trembling lip and his eyes roll, searching the sky with a plea for help. Her face buried in his chest, Jemma remains protected from his fears and comforted by the gentle strokes of his palm against her back. Allowing her eyes to close once more, she escapes to another world – the one they belong to – and imagines that same hand brushing sweetly across her skin as they lie together in a warm, cozy queen-size made just for them.

 Fitz’s eyes remain fixed open.

 

  ** _71 hours_**

 

“WHERE IS THE SUN?! What did you do to it? I want the sun!” she screams at the heavens in frenzied despair, before collapsing to her knees and letting Fitz collect her in his embrace. Jemma sobs violently against his shoulder, her hair catching a little in his rough stubble, while he holds tight in an effort to subdue her. “I want to go home,” she cries.

 His prolonged silence gives away the struggle it takes to muster reassurances. Eventually, he comes up with, “We’re gonna get home. _We will_.” It’s almost convincing.

 “I can’t wait any longer, Fitz,” she confesses in a teary sigh.

 “Okay. So let’s not wait.”

 “What?” She pulls away to look at him and searches his eyes for understanding.

 “They’re gonna rescue us,” Fitz begins, preempting any unintended implications before he explains his meaning, “but it could take a while and… I don’t know about you but… I’m hungry.” It’s almost a laugh. Because of course he is. He always is. And the familiarity of that offers a brief distraction. “I think we need to move further afield, see if we can find some way to eat and drink.”

 Within minutes, she’s transformed herself into action woman and self-appointed leader of their mission. Her hair is tied up with a piece of fabric from her blouse, her cardigan now refashioned into a bag. Fitz watches, impressed, before taking off his own cardigan to follow suit. He’s not sure what they need two cardigan bags for but he feels the need to do something in the vein of useful. When she looks up and notices his efforts, Jemma is quick to say, “No. We can use yours as a blanket – it’ll soften the ground a bit, at least.” He instinctively offers it to her, hoping it might at least be of comfort, but she shakes her head. Fitz stares at it briefly before putting it back on.

 “The average person can survive up to three weeks without food–” She stops herself as she notices his mouth beginning to open. “–and I say that knowing full well you do not have the appetite of a normal person.” Jemma pauses to allow for a shift in tone, anguish swallowing her joke whole. “But we can only survive 100 hours without water.”

 “We need to find water.”

 She nods. “I’d say we should head out west from here. It has the least visibility from where we are, so it’ll be our best chance of uncovering something – perhaps a body of water… of some kind. And we should leave some markings, that way–”

 “–if they show up while we’re away, they’ll know where to find us.”

 Jemma begins collecting large rocks from their immediate vicinity and laying them out next to where they the portal spat them both out. Once she starts, Fitz moves to take over gathering the rocks so that she can arrange them into a large, unmissable arrow.

 

**_81 hours_ **

 

“Is it going to be an expensive place?” she asks him as they walk together, a giddy lilt to her question. It gives away an excitement about his proposition that he daren’t even have hoped for. Of course it’s rather inconsequential now, but that doesn’t stop the blood rushing to his cheeks.

 “I’m not–”

 “Have you already picked it?”

 “Jemma–”

 “Should I wear a dress or would that be weird?”

 “That would definitely be weird but don’t let that stop you,” he teases her, earning himself a light elbow to the ribs. “When have _you_ ever worn a dress?”

 “I’d make an effort for our date,” Jemma replies, saying a little more than she means to. She doesn’t miss the way his eyebrows quirk up a little, registering her response with the perfect mix of surprise and delight.

 “Did I say date?” There’s a pause as his question hangs in the great space between them. They continue walking in stride, looking straight ahead and decidedly not at each other.

 Eventually, she can’t help but reply meekly with, “I think you did.”

 “I don’t think so,” Fitz argues playfully.

 She shrugs. “You seemed awfully keen to have it be just the two of us. What was it? _Somewhere nice_.”

 There are moments, this one for example, where they can pretend it’s a Sunday hike through the mountains, or a stroll in the park. It takes the edge off. Jemma turns to look at him, her nose scrunched in lieu of a smile as she watches Fitz evade her eye-line.

 They keep moving forward.

 

**_87 hours_ **

 

They run out of things to talk about. For the first time ever.

 They’re in a fight but neither one of them remember how it started. Their hearts aren’t in it. Hunger and exhaustion have made them both a little crabby, and it’s become easier _not_ to talk. It conserves energy. He’s decided that’s a priority, telling himself that it’s not just because he’s afraid to talk to her about the things that really matter, those things that inevitably pervade a person’s thoughts when they are thirteen hours from death.

 Jemma missteps on a stone, pulling her feet out from under her and jerking him back to attention. “Jem!” Fitz calls out, rushing to help her up. He quickly examines the scrapes on her arms before checking her expression. She’s wincing but otherwise composed. “You scared me.”

 “Yeah,” is all she can say.

 He takes her hand.

 Jemma’s mouth opens, preparing to argue, “Fitz, I don’t need you to hold my hand!” but she catches the look in his eyes that says, “I need _you_ to hold _mine_ ,” and instead moves her fingers to interlock with his.

 

**_99 hours_ **

 

Fitz knows he’s the weaker of the two. His walking pace has dropped to a slow stumble behind her more determined strides. There’s no energy left in him. He falls to the ground, weak and heavy. The thump of it winds him a little but that’s the least of his troubles as he lies hollow in the dust, ready for the end. It’s not that the fight’s gone out of him, it’s that everything else has.

 “I… won’t… make it… Jem…” she hears his throat scratch out. “Just… get to the top… Water…”

 She collapses beside him at first, before mustering the energy to sob into his chest. No tears escape. She’s bone dry. But she writhes against him, pulling at his shirt in a feeble effort to revive him.

 “No, you don’t get to die. I need you alive,” she cries faintly against his cheek. Her voice is but a distant memory, the sand in the air having dried out her throat the same as his. Jemma looks at Fitz expectantly. He’s never disobeyed her in his life, not when it's mattered, not ever. He _has_ to wake up, has to rise to his feet and lead her on the rest of their journey. He has to. He has to. _He has to_.

 She drops her forehead to rest against his, her fingers brushing over the line of his face in gentle appraisal. He's achingly still against her touch. Holding Fitz's face in her hands, those hands that have held his heart since the moment she met him, Jemma looks at him one last time before leaving a chaste kiss on his lips.

Wondering with every pain in her body whether it might not be better to lie with him and wait for it all to be over, she feebly clambers back to her feet.

 _Just get to the top... Water_. 


	3. Chapter 3

**_101 hours_ **

 

Jemma stirs half-buried in cold, blue sand. It’s a few seconds before she can get her bearings. Fitz is lying meters away, still unconscious. She’s halfway up a sand dune but the vantage point reveals a distant, _impossible_ watering hole as she surveys the landscape. Part of her wonders if she’s hallucinating. Conditions as extreme as these often do that to people; she’s read plenty of case studies. She _needs_ to hope, though. It’s her only hope. And his.

 “Fitz,” she gasps voicelessly the moment her eyes discover it. “Oh, Fitz.”

 Stumbling as weakly as Fitz had been immediately before his collapse, she rushes to his limp body and begins dragging him in a path towards the water. Somehow she makes it all the way, mustering strength beyond expectation. Jemma pulls Fitz as close to the water as she can – if it even is water – and frantically scoops handfuls of the stuff to his mouth. Eventually, desperately, she pushes his head under briefly, in one last desperate ploy to shock him into consciousness. He comes out spluttering, much to her relief.

 “ _Fitz_ ,” she breathes, before hurriedly quenching her own thirst with urgent handfuls. It proves the most simultaneously delicious and revolting thing she’s ever tasted. Once she’s had enough of it, she turns onto her back in satiated relief, a laugh coming out with a renewed voice behind it.

 Her laughs quickly turn to cries. The relief of saving him doesn’t quite eclipse the trauma of losing him. She covers her eyes with her hand, shielding his view of her tears. It means she doesn’t see him move to her as soon as he finds the strength to, but only knows of it once he’s lifting her hands away, his face hovering over hers with tears of his own.

 Jemma grabs him suddenly in a hug, pulling Fitz on top of her to close the unnecessary gap between them. He seems to expect it. At the very least, he’s grateful for it. His head buries in her neck before he whispers, raspy and weak (but resolute): “Thank you.”

  

**_109 hours_ **

 

Fitz watches as Jemma takes off her jeans and blouse. It’s a mercy that she does it quickly, relieving any slow torture that might otherwise befall her best friend. Stripped down to her tank top and underwear, she leaves the rest of her clothes next to where he’s sitting before eagerly climbing into the water. The prospect of bathing is so distractingly enticing, it seems not to have occurred to Jemma that her state of undress would have any effect at all on Fitz, who is guiltily averting his gaze in a manner so conspicuous that she catches it in her periphery. Characteristically oblivious, she puts it down to sand in his eyes.

 A slight moan escapes her lips as she submerges her body in the miraculous pool. Fitz watches the way her eyes close as she settles contentedly in the water, and the way they open again to find him. Focusing on his gaunt, unshaven face brings a bright smile to her lips.

 “You should get in, Fitz. It’s refreshing.” Her words are spoken in even, smooth breaths, as though to underline her message. She lies back and lets herself float on the surface. “It’s okay – look.”

 He stutters wordlessly in reply.

 He can’t quite work out whether it’s his phobia of the water or the prospect of unromantically undressing in front of her that causes greater anxiety, but somehow she manages to talk him into it. In just a t-shirt and boxers, though neither of them is going to make any reference to that fact, he timidly steps in as Jemma moves to meet him by the water’s edge.

 “You’ll be okay, Fitz.” Sensing his nerves, Jemma places a hand on his arm. She gives him a smile so warm, so relaxed, it seems hard to believe she’s already saved him from the brink of death once today as she promises, “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

 Instinctively, Fitz reaches for her hand, cautiously letting her guide him a little away from the edge. His gaze fixes on her face in an effort to avoid them involuntarily travelling anywhere else. In the corner of his eye, he can see that her clothes are clinging to her form, revealing every curve, and it turns his gaze into a determined stare. He can’t look down, can’t look down, can’t look down.

 In return, Jemma offers an unwavering smile. She moves his hands to her shoulders, steadying him as he apprehensively navigates the water.

 Fitz moves to mimic her earlier position, lying across the water’s surface with her hand placed supportively on his back. He almost relaxes. He thinks about it, at least. But the worry that their inadvertent intimacy – that’s perhaps less inadvertent than Jemma is willing to confess – will escalate into something resembling romantic progress prevents him from loosening up. It at least provides a necessary distraction from memories of his last underwater experience, which now feels like more of a convenient cover for his present uneasiness.

Feeling his tense frame against her palm, Jemma thinks about kissing him. Just for the hell of it. Just to see if it will relax him, take the edge off, allow him to savor the sweet relief of finding water. The notion doesn’t get a chance to blossom into action, however, before she feels something move over her leg. Barely has the gentle brush of danger registered in her mind before it begins to aggressively pull her down. She screams, loud and piercing, and lets go of Fitz – but not before pushing him out to the water’s edge with enough force that he’s straddling the border before momentum allows him to stop. She feels water fill her nose and mouth before she can fully process what’s happening, before she can initiate the fight. As soon as she’s caught up, Jemma pulls back against the evil planet’s grasp of her leg, fighting to see the surface again. “Fitz! Get out! Get out!”

 It goes against every instinct but, already half out of the water thanks to Jemma’s fierce shove, he pulls himself onto dry land. With a firm position at the water’s edge, he is able to stretch an arm back to her, urgently grabbing hold of Jemma’s hand with a tightness of grip that can only be compared to when they were dragged through the portal in the first place.

 “It’s got my leg!” she warns after one particularly ferocious pull on Fitz’s part, his desperation manifesting as impatience. Eventually, their strength wins out and she struggles back onto the dust with the evil creature still entwined around her leg. Together, they both begin beating it senseless with a couple of rocks, until the part of the alien plant that has hold of Jemma severs and drops away. Panting, she runs what seems a safe distance away, leaving the torn piece of the monster plant by the water. Fitz is at her side, a hand on her back either for support or for his own corporeal reminder that she’s still with him.

 Instinctively, Jemma turns to him, pulling a little at his sodden t-shirt. “Are you okay?”

 Disbelief in his expression, he wryly replies, “Yeah, _I’m_ okay. Are you?”

 “Yeah,” she says, still gasping for air, before repeating more convincingly, “Yeah.”

  

**_111 hours_ **

 

They find an area of land where the ground is markedly warm and dry off faster than they expect, putting their jeans back on just as soon as their condition is reduced to a light dampness. Their surprise catch of the day lies ominously at the side of their modest pile of belongings: shoes, cardigans and Jemma’s phone. It’s becoming increasingly clear to both of them that this is dinner, like it or not. ( _Not_ , Fitz thinks bitterly.)

 Sitting in what seems to be a two-man camp circle around their gathered items, they both look at each other in anticipation of their meal, as though playing each other for who eats first. Eventually, Jemma decides she’s too hungry to win this game and takes a considerable bite out of the alien plant that had only a short time earlier been trying to take a bite out of her.

 “How is it?”

 “Delicious,” she replies sarcastically, before passing the wretched thing to him. “Eat some, Fitz.” He takes a bite and his face contorts in revulsion as she muses, “Reminds me of smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels… mixed with, _mmmm_ , perhaps lobster or crab, but also, at the same time, maybe corn on the cob? We gotta bottle this stuff.” She takes another bite after Fitz hands it back to her but, even for the sake of comedy, she can’t withhold her own disgusted grimace.

 “We’ll have to start a restaurant,” he says, smiling at last.

 “When we get home.”

 Fitz stares at her for a moment, reads her plea for comfort. “When we get home,” he agrees.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the lovely feedback on previous chapters! Hope you continue to enjoy.

  ** _492 hours_**

 

After three weeks, the planet begins to look worryingly like their permanent home to its new inhabitants, who are adjusting and formulating survival strategies with surprising deftness. They didn’t even pass their field assessments, after all. Nevertheless, their only source of food and water has been identified, allowing them relief from the aching emptiness of their stomachs. Using sticks and rocks sourced from their new home, Fitz constructs a pair of stakes to strengthen future attacks on potential prey. They are designed for hunting food, but he finds himself comforted by the presence of a weapon in their possession.

 Jemma elects herself to be the primary hunter. Their extraterrestrial experiences have only exacerbated Fitz’s phobia of water, and he doesn’t quite have the constitution for hunting.

 They procrastinate as best they can but with limited earthly possessions, no wifi and a rumbling stomach, it doesn’t last very long. They go over the game plan three times more than is strictly necessary. Fitz offers, well over three times more than is strictly necessary, to be the hunter. Jemma, in turn, sighs and reassures him every time. She doesn’t say as much but there’s no way on whatever hellish planet they’re stranded on that she’s letting him get back in the water. And certainly not for her sake.

 They walk back to the water side by side, both with a stake in one hand; it’s in the hand facing away from each other, their free hands available just in case one needs to reach out for the other.

 Jemma climbs in without delay. She doesn’t look at Fitz. The comfort of his presence would undoubtedly be canceled out by any small glance at his anxious expression. It could distract from the mission at hand.

 “You want me? Here I am! It’s dinnertime, come and get it!” she declares brazenly, tempting any underwater creature that dares to take her on. Fitz watches, biting his lip till it bleeds. He tries to remind himself of their conversation, of her earlier promise: “ _I can do this. I’ll be fine_.” The only thing stopping him from stopping her is the belief that she really can; she can do anything. It’s Jemma.

 He instinctively lurches forward the moment she goes under. He’s at the edge, ready to pull her out or, should she stay under for any longer than 15 seconds, dive in and save her (not that he’s told her about that part of the plan). He gets to 14 before Jemma comes bursting triumphantly out of the water, the monster plant hanging limp in her hands. She throws it his way before pulling herself up.

 She’s laughing uproariously with the adrenaline of it. “You’re dinner, biatch!” Jemma yells at her lifeless prey lying on the ground. A laugh escapes Fitz too: grateful, disbelieving, and awed. She performs a little victory dance before warmly giving him a celebratory hug.

 When they walk the few meters back to their makeshift camp, Fitz takes charge of building the fire and, though Jemma assists, once they’ve found a flame, she lets herself nap for a while. As per Fitz’s suggestion, she balls up his cardigan and curls around it, the heat of the fire close enough to comfort her, and contentedly drifts into a peaceful slumber. It makes him smile – _really_ smile – to see her so relaxed. He lets their meal cook slowly, cautious of overcooking the food but keen to let Jemma sleep as long as she needs.

 There’s something momentous about the comfort and ease of it, Fitz considers. Can this really be their new life? Even if it is, perhaps they can make it work. It’s the first time the idea of not getting home has been anything but utterly terrifying.

 When the time comes, he brushes a wayward lock of her hair out of her face to gently wake her. “Dinnertime.”

 Jemma gives a drowsy moan before rubbing her eyes and sitting up beside him, a little closer than he expects; any closer and, well, there isn’t really such a thing as any closer. Her hand rests absently on his thigh. She seems not to have noticed. He respectfully _pretends_ not to have. 

“Are you ready for today’s special, courtesy of Miss Jemma Simmons and cooked by our head chef, Leo Fitz?” He gestures theatrically to himself.

 “Gimme!” she says, now wide-eyed and smiling.

 The food that had, when raw, been almost inedibly revolting has now been mercifully upgraded to tasteless. It’s less chewy, as well, which comes as a relief.

 “Hey, I don’t mean to be… patronising, or…” Fitz shakes his head, as though attempting to unscramble the words that are cluttering his mind, before turning to look at her. “I was so proud of you today. I didn’t know you had it in you but then, watching you, somehow I wasn’t even surprised. _Of course_ you could do it.”

 It hangs between them. She’s reading a look in his eye that she doesn’t quite know, can’t quite recognize. It seems impossible. She knows them all.

 Jemma opens her mouth to reply but, with no warning, a loud and proud burp escapes her – its duration as impressive as its volume – and they both erupt into fits of laughter. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you burp like that before!” Fitz laughs, shaking his head again. She adds a few modest after-burps before he takes a turn, more than meeting her lofty expectations.

 “I’m an amazing burper. A _pro_ burper, if you will,” she contends.

 “You _are_ amazing,” Fitz concedes, made almost cross-eyed by her proximity as he looks adoringly back at her, a smile in his eyes. His awe at her earlier triumph lingers in his expression, drawing a blush out of Jemma’s cheeks.

 Breathing out a contented sigh, she confesses, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Jemma moves her head to rest on his shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here, Fitz. Well,” she corrects herself, “I’m not glad at all. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. But I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

 “I’d rather be here than be without you,” he says, so quiet it’s as though he’s not entirely sure whether he wants her to hear him.

 Jemma searches between them for his hand, locking her fingers in his and lifting their clasped hands to rest against her chest. “We’re gonna get home, Fitz. I’m not giving up.” It sounds like a promise; it carries the belief that she owes it to him to repay his stupid, brave, rash decision to follow her into hell by finding them a way out. 

He gently moves her hair away from her face, tucking it loosely behind the ear not resting against his shoulder. “Neither am I,” he whispers – a pointed reminder that they’re in it together, as always. He punctuates his words with a kiss to her temple that meets more hair than skin. 

Jemma curls tighter into him.

  

**_752 hours_ **

****

“We’ve been on this stupid planet for a month now, Fitz,” Jemma gripes as she continues chewing on the previous day’s leftovers. Fitz is lying sound asleep opposite her, snoring softly. “No idea where the entry point is anymore. My best guess is one of the planet’s sandstorms destroyed all the markings we made. Very unhelpful.” She rolls her eyes, not in irritation but in an attempt to avert tears. “I guess I’ll have to tell you that at some point but, you know, why spoil a perfectly good time? Besides, you probably know already and just aren’t telling me. That’s sweet.”

 Looking around at the bleakness of it all, the dark and barren desert of night that stretches out in every direction, Jemma grimaces. She can see another ostensibly minor sandstorm taking shape what seems to be about a mile away. “Hansel and Gretel never had to contend with this.”

 She gets up, grabs her makeshift bag and her Fitz-made stake, brushes the dust off her jeans and surveys her surroundings once more. “I’m going for a walk, sleepy head, but I’ll be back before you wake up,” Jemma tells Fitz’s sleeping body before leaning down to place a soft kiss to his cheek. “Breakfast’s on me.”

 She begins to walk away from their camp, heading towards the ridge she’s been eyeing up since her last little adventure. There’s nothing particularly extraordinary about this area of dreary wasteland, but the clanging of old bamboo-like plants draws her attention. On days when the wind really picks up, they can make such a racket that it wakes her. Never Fitz, though. He could sleep through anything.

 She elects to wander through the mini bamboo jungle, examining each one close up. Her eyes study the tall plants, fascinated by the homogeneous structure of all of them; she wonders if she might be able find a way to measure their growth during her time on the planet.

 The clattering builds around her. When the crescendo comes, there’s a crack. She feels it underfoot. The ground disappears. She screams.

 The fall knocks her out. For a moment, she’s dazedly conscious, but it passes – she’s out cold.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hang in there. Things will make sense soon, I promise. (Yes, there may be a little more to the AU than Fitz going through the portal with Jemma.)

**_761 hours_ **

****

Fitz has been awake for five hours. He’d woken peacefully, a drowsy moan escaping him as he came to, before he’d stretched himself out into a full body yawn. Only as he’d drawn his arms back in had his eyes opened to reveal his solitude. There had been no need to panic initially. It wasn’t like he hadn’t wandered off a fair few times while Jemma had been sleeping. Her absence made him uneasy, but not frantic. Frantic came later. Frantic came after thirty minutes and no sign. Frantic built and built until he was tripping over himself in breathless runs to follow any possible lead he could think of, any ghost of a footprint, any favorite spot, _anything_.

 His head hangs heavy as he drags himself across the midnight blue desert in search of a sign, any sign of her. He’s heading back to their base camp for the third time now, hoping that it’ll be this time that he’ll return to find her there, eating more disgusting monster plant by herself and saying, “Fitz! Where on earth have you been?”

 When he looks up, his eye catches sight of an anomaly in the distance. Against the sandy, flat plane that stretches out for miles, he notices something on the ground, something unnatural – bigger than a rock, though similar. It’s a lump in the ground, a perfect half-sphere, too perfectly round to be of natural origin. He closes in on it, his eyes thinning to scrutinize whatever it might be. The nearer he gets, the more it appears to be a hatch of some kind, a rounded cover. It’s manmade. It’s unambiguously manmade, he realizes with astonishment, noticing a rope hanging off of the small handle.

 Fitz pulls it open without hesitation. He hastily climbs in and begins to make his way down the rungs of the ladder that hangs from floor to ceiling.

 “Jemma?” he calls out in a voice so fractured and coarse from the endless pain of futile repetition that it barely sounds. “Jemma?”

 Fitz stumbles through the mysterious cave impervious to the chilling darkness of it, unburdened with fear of his own mortality, simply desperate to find her. He calls out her name a few more times but it’s the sound of his hard footsteps that she hears first.

 When Jemma sees him, he’s trembling violently. The way his arms shake and move in wild detachment from his purposeful stride, it’s as though he’s lost all control of them. Fitz rushes towards her, appearing from an indiscernible tunnel, a desperate stumble of a run closing the gap between them. She watches his eyes take in the cage, disturbed and angered and heartbroken by her entrapment.

 “I thought–” he sobs so heartily she can barely make out the words. His fingers cling to the bars of her cage, curling around them, pulling forcefully against them, as though he’s too frenzied to free her any other way.

 “No, I know…” she reassures him. Jemma is calmer. Relief clouds all else. He’s come to save her – at last. She won’t indulge her emotions until he’s calm.

 “God, I thought–”

 “ _Fitz_.” She places her hands over his. “I need you to breathe.”

 He stops pulling and simply looks at her, centering himself under her gaze. _Breathe_.

 What Jemma needs, Fitz will always, always, always find a way to provide. His hands drop from the cage bars to find a lock. A lock. A lock needs a key, he quickly deduces. Fitz turns away, walks to find it, begging for an easy solution this one time. The universe owes him one – or many, but he’ll take just one, this one.

 It feels miraculous when he promptly discovers a small gold key in a passage a few meters from the hatch entrance. No games. No Indiana Jones-esque ordeal to retrieve it. Fitz eagerly picks up the key, holds it tight in his palm for a moment, as though checking it’s not a booby trap, and then he turns back to Jemma.

 The moment Fitz unlocks the cage door, she pours into his arms, burying her face in his neck as she moves a hand up to hold his head steady against her. His cries are muffled by her skin. Even without sound, she can feel the sensation of his sobs violently shaking against her thinning frame. Just the way he holds her is different, more desperate. She’s used to Fitz’s delicate touch. There’s a fragility to the way he usually hugs her, as though not wanting to break her – no, not even wanting to make a dent in her perfect form. This time, his hold on her is tight and desperate and fuelled by the fear that if he lets her go, she’ll go.

 The gentle caresses that she brushes through his hair are a reminder that she won’t. Somehow, she knows it’ll take more to convince him of that.

 “This place is creepy. Let’s get out of here,” Jemma suggests softly, once time enough has passed for him to grieve what was only almost lost. In this world, almosts are the best they can hope for.

Fitz pulls away to examine her expression. "Have you seen anybody? How did you-"

"I just fell. I just fell in. It's just been you," she tells him, relief pouring over her words as though she's only now realizing how terrifying every conscious second had been. "I haven't seen anyone. It's just been you, Fitz."

  

**_783 hours_ **

 

Fitz hasn’t slept in thirty hours. Not since he woke up to find his best friend gone without a trace.

 His eyes have been immovably fixed on Jemma since the moment he got her back. The only interval Fitz has taken during his self-imposed Jemma-watch was brief: he’d insisted he take his turn as the hunter-gatherer, mustering every bit of strength to take the plunge and source the evening’s dinner. He’d done it, too. It took a little longer than when Jemma did it, but she had the advantage of practice. Fitz had come out of the water, dead plant in hand, with a prideful look on his face that made all of Jemma’s worrying almost worth it. _Almost_. It was a break from his fussing, at least. The only break.

 Now Jemma is curled up, her head resting against his balled up cardigan once more – it’s become her beloved pillow – and her eyes are closed. She looks just as she did the last time he’d seen her before her disappearance.

 “You need rest, Fitz,” she says, her own eyes still closed under the pretence of not actually being awake. She senses his continued hovering over her with an odd mix of concern and frustration. “Sleep deprivation won’t do us any good.”

 “I’ll sleep later.” His terse reply is about as grumpy and dismissive as she knows to expect.

 “ _Fitz_.” It’s that word again. Her favorite word. Falling off her tongue with that same ease that it always has, escaping like a sigh.

 “ _Simmons_.”

 Her eyes snap open. “You’re angry with me?”

 “Why did you wander off?” Fitz sounds like a petulant child, small.

 “I… I was trying to get food for us. To… scout the area… You know, unlike you, watching people sleep is not an activity I’ve ever found particularly riveting, to be honest, Fitz.”

 “I thought you’d…” He daren’t say it.

 She moves to look at him, a determined frankness in her eyes. “Do you know how many times you’ve almost died on me? Do you want me to make a list? Whatever you’re feeling right now, you don’t have the monopoly on it.”

 Fitz goes quiet.

 “Get some sleep?” she tries again after a long silence falls between them.

 Fitz scowls a little before shifting begrudgingly to lie down next to her. She smiles smugly to herself before moving closer into him.

 “I’ll be here when you wake up. I promise,” Jemma whispers as he closes his eyes.

 He begins to drift in and out of sleep, never fully at peace, while she lies close. She’s close enough that he can feel her brushing against him, a reassurance that persuades him not to force his eyes open every time he comes conscious. Most of the time, it’s her who wakes him – not that he’ll ever tell her. He won’t mention the way she reaches for his hand during the night, or the fear in her voice as she calls out: “Let me out of here now!” They’ll wake up to a new day, a new start.


	6. Chapter 6

**_824 hours_ **

****

They’re sat on opposite sides of a modest fire that Jemma’s assembled in record time, their tasteless food just now settling in their stomachs. Fitz is looking pensively at the ground as she watches his index finger draw lines into the dust in front of him. She notices the tremors in his hand, slight but unmistakable, and remembers the way he’d looked when he’d found her, his whole body shaking violently as they’d fallen against each other into their hug. His shuddering frame still haunts her. Jemma's eyes can't keep from studying him for symptoms of fragility that turn her stomach.

 "You didn't have to come," she says, abruptly interrupting a relaxed silence. It’s a conversation that’s been looming since the day they were both thrown across the universe. Her voice is deep, unusually so, as though hiding low from the tears that are rising up.

 "What?"

 "You could've got away from it. It only wanted me."

 "Well, coincidentally, that's all I want too, so here we are," he replies brusquely, refusing to indulge her compulsion for guilt. Fitz is grumpy in manner, as though disturbed by her need to question his decision: a decision that never came with alternative options as far as Fitz is concerned. His directness seems to take her breath away, and he sees it; he catches the silent gasp that escapes her, and bows his head. Softer, he adds, "I made my choice. That's that."

 "We're going to die here, Fitz.” It’s almost a sigh, almost _just accept what this is_. Almost. But on the edge of her frustrated, defeated statement is a plea for hope.

 "That's not the attitude," he says, forcibly shifting tone to a playful teasing that feels so inappropriate to their circumstances that she finds it a displacing comfort. After a silence, with his eyes watching his own hands mark shapes into the dusty ground, he quietly sings to himself, "To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die…"

 Jemma looks up at him and observes the way he cautiously evades her eyes, as though scared of giving too much of himself away. Truth is, it's too late. His secrets are laid bare. She decides it's her turn. "Can I tell you a story?"

 His eyes lift before his head.

 "You have to promise to believe me."

 "Why wouldn't I–"

 "I need you to promise."

 "I promise," Fitz replies with a shrug.

 "Do you remember when we first met?” She waits for him to smile. It’s small and beautiful and turns her stomach right way up. “You were so… quiet and pasty, so incredibly smart… handsome.”

 Fitz finds himself listening intently. He hangs onto her every word, each syllable a revelation. This is uncharted territory. They’ve never talked about first impressions, not really, not seriously. He’s teased her about the way her hand kept flying up in their first lecture; she’s contended that it was rather better than transforming into a stuttering mess upon meeting all of their professors. But they’ve never opened up about that feeling-in-the-pit-of-their-stomach moment. Until now. _Handsome_ , she’d said. Handsome.

 “Quite a strange feeling, isn’t it, never wanting to be without someone…”

 Jemma’s head bows coyly and he wonders if she might start to cry before realizing that _he_ already is.

 “You must have been so annoyed, me following you around all the time,” she continues, her voice uneven but broken with a light laugh at the memory of their many pedeconferences at the academy.

 Fitz quickly cuts her off, struggling to take a breath: “No, never.” There’s something so wretched and pained about his voice, his reply urgently escaping him without thought. She watches his hand as it moves across his skin to collect the length of a fallen tear.

 “I imagine our dinner sometimes. _Our date_ ,” she corrects herself, firm in her choice of words. Jemma’s eyes stare distantly into another world – one where they belong. “Where we’d go, what we’d eat. I wonder about us a lot actually. There’s a small cottage in Perthshire we drove by once when I was a girl. Some family holiday, I think. I don’t know why but… I found it so lovely.”

 He listens, stunned and moved in equal measure. Jemma’s accent gets thicker as emotion takes hold of her throat and it transports him. _Lovely_.

 “I still think about it. A place where you and I could…” She doesn’t say it, can’t quite. Baby steps. She catches her breath and watches him attempt to do the same.

 “Perthshire’s in Scotland,” he points out, his face relaxing somewhat.

 “I know where it is, Fitz,” Jemma replies, in that ‘ _oh, Fitz’_ tone he adores the same way his head adores a memory foam pillow and his stomach adores a good pretzel. He finds himself distracted by the way her hair frames her face as she turns to look at him. It bounces over her shoulders in the swift movement. She grins and refrains from rolling her eyes, but only just.

 They lock eyes and suddenly he’s suffocating. Everything he’s ever wanted is such a breathtaking sight that he has to avert his gaze to exhale, releasing a burst of pent up feeling in a heavy sigh.

 “You’re just… tired and dehydrated,” he says eventually.

 "I'm as clear-headed now as I've ever been,” she replies resolutely. Her firmness confounds him. Directness had never been either one of their strong suits. Perhaps she is tired after all, simply tired of wasting time, tired of not being with him. “Ask me again later. Ask me again anytime you like. Ask me every day and I’d tell you the same."

 He’s silent.

 “What do you think we should do about it?”

 Fitz turns to look at her, examining her expression as though it’s there that he’ll find the answer. A trembling half-smile forms on his lips before he sighs, an audible, theatrical sigh that transforms into a laugh. “I think we should go to Perthshire.”

 The air is lighter now. It becomes somehow breathable again for Jemma and she smiles back at him; it’s that blindingly bright smile that only comes out on special occasions. She feels the tension in her body dissipate, her shoulders drop, and she turns to stare straight ahead as Fitz does the same. They look on into the bleak distance but what they’re seeing isn’t reality; it’s that shared vision of the future that they’re both begging the universe to let them have.

 For just one night, it’s more than a pipedream.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy this chapter as things become a little clearer. Thank you so much for the feedback and kind comments on previous updates! I really appreciate it.

**_851 hours_ **

****

Jemma is running jubilantly back to their base camp with dinner in hand and Fitz trailing behind when she loses her footing. She feels her ankle roll and it brings the rest of her to the ground with a dull thump. The injury is so intense and abrupt that it seems to numb every pained part of her upon impact, making her temporarily oblivious to the large, sharp-edged rock beneath her leg that manages to break her skin as she attempts to find her feet again. And then the sting hits. It hits like a freight train and almost knocks her straight back down again. But Fitz is there. Fitz catches her hands before the light-headedness can take effect.

 Limping valiantly despite the unalleviated agony of her cut, she leans on him for the rest of their walk back home. _Home_. Their temporary home. That little spot in the desert that they’ve claimed possession of. It eases the ache for home, _real_ home and whatever that means: planet home, work home, America, Britain, _home_ home.

 As they close in on camp, eyeing the still-blazing fire from a small distance, the wind begins to pick up. It makes their steps harder. Harder even than Jemma’s injury has made their walk. She drops the monster plant as their priorities begins to shift, as the weather becomes a battle. It seems to intensify with ferocious intent, progressing from its gentle first breeze to terrifying potency within only seconds. They can only observe as their fire is blown out, sand swirling and pouring over it like water. It whips their faces, new winds thick with grit and dust.

 Fitz leads Jemma away, using her physical dependence to his advantage.

 As they move, speed conflicting with forceful resistance, the wind makes it impossible to catch their breath; it also proves a great physical strain to run as the wind circles them, but Fitz pushes on, fighting it with the strength of someone else, someone trained for this.

 Jemma lets him lead. She lets him until she sees it coming closer with every stride: that underground bunker, home only to her worst nightmares.

 “We can’t go in there! I won’t do it!” Jemma says without a hint of uncertainty. Feeling herself beginning to tremble, either with pain or with fear, she drops hold of Fitz’s hand, lets it hang loose and lost and like it’s suddenly entirely without purpose.

 Fitz searches their surroundings for an alternative. He’s looking for a way to assure her that she doesn’t have to climb back into her cage or willingly submerge herself inside of a trauma that he was never privy to. “Jem–” he starts, because there is nothing else.

 The sandstorm is closing in on them now, furious waves of grit approaching from the western region of wasteland that remains largely uncharted territory. The sound of it muffles their voices. All talking has become shouting. The noise is building with every second of delay. They know what that means: it’s getting closer.

 Fitz’s head turns in alarm and Jemma’s snaps around to follow his eye-line. They’re examining the wind speed. After barely a moment, his focus switches back to her. He places his hands firmly on her upper arms, holding her square in front of him in a last desperate attempt to persuade her, or reassure her. Whichever she needs it to be. “We haven’t got a choice. We have to go.”

 She hardly hears him but she hardly needs to. The reluctance in her expression remains, but she doesn’t resist when, without another word, he pulls her towards the hole in the ground. Her former prison. After their great escape, they return humbled, now volunteering themselves for capture.

They’re clumsy and heavy as they climb down. Jemma misses one rung of the ladder and nearly falls the rest of the way. Fitz is so preoccupied with pulling the cover over that he almost collapses once he’s done it. A light dusting of sand falls through the gap over Fitz’s head, but once he’s pulled the cover closed, it’s ostensibly secure.

 “I’m not really feeling the welcome, I have to say,” Fitz says, gasping for breath. “I’ll be leaving some very critical Yelp feedback at the end of our stay.”

 Jemma relaxes a little at that, a reluctant smile pulling at her lips as she tries to ease her panting. Hastily pulling her phone out of her pocket as the closed cover brings darkness with its protection, she turns on the torch function to allow them a little light.

 “What the hell _was_ that?” he exclaims once he can see her again, shaking his head as though it might wake him from a stupor.

 Feigning composure, Jemma replies, “It’s a sandstorm, Fitz.”

 “That was like no sandstorm I’ve ever known.”

 “Shocking, what with all that time you’ve spent topping up your tan out in the desert.” She adds a trademark eye-roll that is so perfectly predictable it makes him smile.

 “Are you trying to give me a complex about my pasty skin? Because you’re a fine one to talk, Simmons.”

 “Oh I’m Simmons again now, am I?” she remarks as they begin to fall into their old patter.

 “Well, you keep bringing up my tan. Or lack thereof.”

 “I _keep_ bringing it up?”

 “Multiple times. Besides, you just called me Fitz.”

 Incredulous, Jemma points out, “I always call you Fitz!”

 “Exactly.”

 “Would you prefer it if I called you Leo?”

 “No!”

 “Well then.”

 “Jemma,” he starts again, “whatever’s out there, it’s evil.” 

She laughs at him, a single, low laugh that’s more exhaustion than amusement. “Planets can’t be evil, Fitz. Everything that happened was a natural, climate-related phenomenon.”

“It was like it was coming for us.” The words fall out reluctantly. He doesn’t want to be the bearer of bad news – _more_ bad news. He wants to pretend it was no big deal and run back to their campfire, the only place on this planet that has brought a slither of comfort. It’s slightly less exposed because of the mound behind it, and it reminds him more of their enduring survival strategies than of the horrors that necessitate them. Losing their one spot on this planet, even if just temporarily, feels like an overwhelming setback. Perhaps it’s this clouding his judgment, making it feel personal and targeted, but his gut says otherwise. “Jem, it’s… Planets have ecosystems. With definable patterns that can be understood. This one… It’s bizarre. It’s like the planet itself hates us.”

 “Oh, _Fitz_!”

 A little embarrassed by his own assertion, he looks around the cave, as though in search of a change of subject. When his attention returns to Jemma, she is limping her way to a seat. “We need to bandage that,” he says quietly, nervously, as though fearing her reaction.

 “Yeah.” She seems to wince at the mention of her injury. Fitz moves to tend to the wound, but Jemma notices his face turn green in a grimace once the blood and gore of it comes into focus and sympathetically gestures him away with a light, “Oh, Fitz.” 

“Two of those in the space of what, two minutes? Really?”

 “Both were very much earned,” she replies with a wry blend of amusement and stubbornness. A gloss forms over his eyes that turns, eventually, into tears that sit on his waterline, prompting Jemma to softly reassure him: “It’s okay. I’m perfectly capable of tending to my own wounds. Although, much as my eyes have adapted to low light, it would be a lot easier if you got a fire going down here. We should conserve battery power as well, right?”

 “Ah, yes. At least when we start to lose it, we’ll have more time for _Word Scramble_.”

 “Something like that.”

 Fitz sets about building a fire quickly, scouting his surroundings for resources to get it lit as Jemma tentatively fingers the wound on her leg. 

“You’re not in too much pain?” he asks while setting up sticks and rocks in the manner to which he’s now become accustomed. Momentarily, he stills, before turning to face her. “I mean… are you okay?”

 Jemma breathes out as the pace of their exchange slows. “Yeah, I’m okay. It’s a little spooky down here,” she admits, “but I’ll be fine once there’s more light. The cut’s not so bad. And you’re here.”

 He turns back to his fire-building to conceal a grin.

 “Are you smiling?”

 He turns to face her, with some faux annoyance. “No.”

 “You were smiling.”

 When Fitz turns back to her again, he’s wearing the grin. His eyes are bright, a little extra twinkle afforded by earlier tears. Jemma can tell he’s as comforted by _this_ , what rallies back and forth between them, as she is. She takes a mental picture before looking away, blinking to fend off tears of her own.

 

**_853 hours_ **

 

Busying himself so as not to outwardly reveal the extent of his squeamish constitution, Fitz discovers a pretty comprehensive first aid kit in the depths of the cave after he has successfully established a fire. It provides Jemma with some much-needed painkillers and the necessary tools to sanitize, stitch and bandage her wound.

 “I’m sorry I’m being useless,” he laments as she finishes up.

 “On the contrary, Fitz. Your nonsensical babbling has been a welcome distraction.” She looks up to shoot him a smile. “I mean it. We all have our strong suits.”

 “Well, your entire closet seems to be strong these days, Jemma.”

 She laughs. “Thank you?” Then, finally having secured her bandage, she returns focus to the as yet undefined game plan. “What have you figured out about this place? I noticed that the medical equipment is all branded with NASA logos. That’s good, right? Whoever lived in here must have been sent from Earth.”

 Fitz attempts to match her optimism. Unable to quite articulate a response, he walks further up the cave, rounding a corner out of Jemma’s view briefly before returning with the helmet of a space suit under his arm.

 “My god,” she gasps, lifting herself onto one leg from her chair.

 Realizing her intentions, Fitz moves to offer Jemma his arm and leads her back toward the rest of his discoveries. He can’t quite decide whether it’s cowardice or deference that prevents him from telling her of his hypothesis; he instead allows her to formulate her own conclusions, acting only as her walking stick on the path to their limited evidence.

 Jemma continues musing: “Is whoever holed out in here dead, do you think? Because even if he is, if NASA sent him then maybe they’ll come looking for survivors anyway, and find us. If they sent him, surely they would have known how to bring him back?”

 Piles of NASA-branded equipment come into view, a mountain of disordered technology that looks like something the early-00s threw up. Fitz’s mouth tightens as he watches his best friend take it all in. It’s a step back in time. The incongruence of tech within a deserted cave is nothing to match the odd outdatedness of the technology itself. Jemma begins to pick over it. “This stuff is ancient. I know NASA has funding issues but you’d think they’d upgrade for a mission like this.”

 Ominously, Fitz replies, “Maybe it was new at the time.”

 That gets Jemma’s attention. Her eyes fix piercingly on Fitz. Terrified, she asks, “How long do you think–”

 “Judging from this stuff, I’d say… 2001, 2002…”

 Jemma’s face goes white. She can taste bile in her mouth and swallows hard. “14 years?”

 They look at each other and see their own fear reflected in a mirror. _14 years_. The notion of 14 years on this hellish planet winds them both. _And how long had the NASA astronauts, built for survival as well as any person could be, been able to live through it?_  

Only as Fitz breathes out a sigh does Jemma remember to breathe at all. _14 years_. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry about the delay with this chapter. I hope you like it.

  ** _855 hours_**

****

Jemma is busy examining the treasure trove of NASA resources that sits in the far corner of their half-lit cave with fervent curiosity. Frustration is getting the better of her as useless documents are disposed of with uncharacteristic disregard, folders dropping with the added thump of extra gravity. It’s only white noise to Fitz, whose attention is focused on their next meal – and the ominous crack in the wall.

 She’s running one hand through her hair when she at last discovers a document of note beneath the pile of half-used journals that she can’t bear to read anymore of. “Fitz, I think–”

 “Yeah?”

 “-I’ve found a map,” she finishes with round smugness.

“How helpful. Tourist information. Maybe I’ll cut them a little slack on the Yelp review after all,” he replies wryly from a few meters away, half-distracted by the food he’s cutting into with a newly acquired NASA branded utensil.

“Fitz, would you just get over here? Look at this.”

He quickly acquiesces, any weak protest crumbling upon formation.

Tracing her index finger over the lines of the map, Jemma studies the various areas of the planet that the map identifies. Her hand halts when she gets to– “The no-fly zone.”

“The what?”

“No-fly zone,” she repeats.

“Well that definitely sounds like the place to be. We should look into bus tours. I’d hate to miss out on something that just sounds so cheerful, so… welcoming.” Fitz just keeps talking, his merciless sarcasm moving out of Jemma’s focus. He seems not to be listening himself, but is instead swept up in his own tide and drifting through the nonsense of it with abandon. That is, until she unapologetically interrupts.

“Maybe we _should_ check it out.”

Fitz stares at her, blinking for effect. “Jemma.”

“There might be… answers.”

“That sounds like a terrible idea. I mean, I don’t want to stifle your creativity – I’ll take any hint of an exit plan at this point – but this seems ill-advised. I think we should stick strictly to fly-zones only. And look at how nicely this map points those out.”

“Fitz.” She rolls her eyes, turning at last to face him.

Taking a more serious tone, he reiterates, “Whoever drew up this map was warning us against it. And charming as your new devil may care attitude is, I strongly suggest that we heed their advice.”

“We need to know what we’re dealing with, Fitz.”

“What we’re dealing with? We’ve got a pile of tech and no way to power it, there’s one hell of a sandstorm currently destroying our aboveground base and a cave that may or may not be haunted by astronauts. I think there’s enough on our plates without you going off to investigate something called ‘the no-fly zone’. _Please_ ,” he says, a pleading vulnerability creeping in that persuades her to relent.

A little crinkle appears between Jemma’s eyebrows. “Okay. We’ll worry about it later. We should… eat.”

“Not quite ready yet. I got distracted,” Fitz explains, gesturing to the cave wall. “While you’ve been planning a nice day trip to ‘the no-fly zone’, I think I’ve figured out why it’s so warm and toasty down here. There’s a luminescent substrata below us.”

Jemma moves to study the glowing crack in the side of the cave, holding her hand out to feel its comforting heat. “Oh. It’s warm.”

“Natural source of heat – keeps the planet warm without sunlight.”

“Incredible,” she remarks in that way she always did when something that seemed implausible – even magical – transformed into a logical scientific explanation; it’s an awed sigh as her lips move to a smile. When she looks back at him, the warmth of her expression puts the planet’s luminescent substrata to shame.

Fitz moves to attend to their remaining food supply, the raw monster plant he has only just recovered from aboveground now sitting in tolerably digestible chunks. He finishes preparing the last of it as Jemma continues to admire the glowing hole in the wall.

“Hungry?” he asks a whole two minutes later as the inevitably limited dinner prep offers its disappointing outcome. She gives her best friend a cheerful nod nevertheless.

As they tuck into their food, pretending, as always, that it’s something else – some rich, fatty home comfort, Fitz tentatively asks, “So, have you found much out from the journals so far?”

The way she prefaces her response is almost comical. Watching him cautiously, Jemma says with a nervous half-smile, “If I tell you, do you promise not to overreact?”

“To the incredibly good news you’re about to share?”

She stares back, replying dryly, “Not quite.”

“What is it now?”

“There’s an entry in which one of the astronauts seems to suggest that there’s a monster on the planet making people go mad, getting inside their heads. When I say ‘people’, I mean the other astronauts. One by one.”

Concealing how spooked he is by continuing to take casual bites out of his dinner, Fitz attempts reassurance. “That sounds like a ghost story. Do you believe it?”

“It seems more likely that it was the isolation that drove them to psychosis. It’s not uncommon, after all.”

“But astronauts are trained for years in isolation,” Fitz points out.

“The journal entries just seem to stop after a while. They detail one of their own going mad after an encounter with a planet monster, who seemed to–” she gestures air quotes “–‘embody what the astronaut _wanted_ to see’, and then the entries just… stop.” Her flow halts, an uncomfortable silence setting in before Jemma adds, quieter, “I don’t know if they all died, or if they just stopped writing.”

“You don’t think this… _monster_ killed them?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore, Fitz.”

“Maybe one of them went mad and killed the others.” He speaks before considering the implications of his reply, before considering that this may not be the most encouraging notion to share.

Jemma doesn’t argue. Nor does she recoil. Her renewed focus is to establish stable truths, answers that might set them on the path to rescue, instead of pussyfooting around realities that might scare them. She pursues Fitz’s theory. “And then killed himself?”

“Maybe.” He bitterly swallows his last miserable mouthful of food and watches the implications of their conversation settle in the lines of Jemma’s expression. She would be unreadable to anyone else. Her façade isn’t bad these days. But Fitz can see fear in the tightness of her face. “Can I say something?”

She looks up from her lap.

“I think we’re going to survive, Jemma,” he says in an incredulous laugh. It’s as though he can’t quite believe that these words are coming out of him. “No one’s gonna believe it. Imagine them back at the academy. They would have written us off weeks ago. And that bloody invigilator from our field assessment – I’d love to wipe the smug grin off of his face.”

Jemma’s eyes well up in an instance and Fitz is quick to drag his chair to sit beside hers. His arm moves around her, an assured gesture of support that is as sweet as it is unexpected. She looks up at him, studying his eyes to find his fear just as readily as he found hers, and matches his optimism with her own: “We won’t just survive, Fitz. We _will_ get home.”

“And when we do–”

“–we’ll wipe the smug grin off Agent Palmer’s face,” she agrees, laughing. It’s proper laughter, open-mouthed and teary-eyed. The rich tone of it stops his heart briefly and he finds himself unable to stop from staring. He’s studying that earnest, hearty laugh before it fades just so that he can summon the memory at will; it might just keep him going through the rough moments, the many moments when laughter is the last thing he can imagine.

“We can do anything together, Fitz. As long as we’re together, there’s always hope.” Jemma nestles into him, her head burying into his neck the way they used to cozy up around their fire. Once she’s comfortable and the contentment of being wrapped up in him – his gentle embrace, his smell, his body heat – sets in, she adds, “I really mean that. This is the most important thing.”

Fitz brushes a lock of hair aside to kiss her sweetly on the temple.


	9. Chapter 9

**_1490 hours_ **

 

“Mmm, your dad’s roasted parsnips,” Fitz says in a wistful sigh.

“Oh. Truffle fries.”

 “Pizza. More toppings than you can shake a stick at. No pineapple!”

 Jemma moans enthusiastic agreement. “And wine. Oh, I’d kill for a glass of wine!”

 They cheers with two NASA-branded cups of water, before both taking sizeable spoonfuls of their food. The sheer novelty of spoons and cups and a modest dinner table setup has yet to wear off. She gazes across the table as Fitz gives a nostalgic smile at the memory of every late night pizza order and every tipsy Jemma experience.

 “What do you miss that’s not food?” she asks, the firelight catching a glint in her eye as her tone shifts somewhat, drawing out a similarly somber expression from him.

 He gives a heavy sigh. “I miss… seeing you smile.”

 An intentionally cheesy grin breaks out on her face, her hands framing her face for emphasis.

“Not like that.” He laughs. “A real smile. Like when you’d perfected a serum or identified the chemical properties of the latest 0-8-4, or when your mum sent over the Dairy Milk package. Oh, and that first time you got full marks in your physics exam after we studied together…”

She watches him talk and feels herself falling into hypnosis; something inside her hopes he’ll just keep going and going. His sentence trails off as looks up and sees that she’s biting her lip, as though reprimanding herself for the beautifully broad smile that she can’t contain.

“Come on. What about you?" 

She feels a strain in her throat as she goes to reply. “I don’t know. I…” Jemma begins to cry, too many tears falling for her to catch them all. He moves around to sit beside her and stretches an arm around her shoulders. “All of it. Too much is gone to break it down into parts.” 

Some desperate desire takes hold of her suddenly and she pulls her treasured phone out of the back pocket of her jeans. Fitz says nothing. He doesn’t cautiously suggest that she preserve battery life this time, or attempt to show her how to dim the light settings. He lets her unlock it without a word and watches as she goes to her video library to unearth a bittersweet memory of the only birthday they’ve spent apart since they met.

On the small, iPhone screen, they see Coulson turning to face the camera carrying the oversized TARDIS cake that Fitz had cheerfully picked out for his best friend. “Okay Jemma, get ready to make a wish and we will blow out the candle for you,” her old boss instructs her before the group: Skye, Hunter, Bobbi, Daisy and Fitz join him to singsong, “Happy birthday Jemma!” The cameraman swiftly turns the lens on himself and reveals Fitz, unflatteringly close-up but so lovingly Fitz to be anything less than handsome in Jemma’s eyes. 

It had been a white flag. He’d been making such an effort, with things still fractured – but healing. Slowly, delicately healing. From the memory within her phone, Fitz adds: “Happy birthday, Jemma. It’s not the same without you here. Say hi to your parents for me and I’ll see you soon.”

“Thank goodness I have you,” she says in a delicate whisper as her hand reaches out to touch him beside her, her eyes still fixed on the screen and a looped but now-muted video of faces she longs to see in the flesh – and _Fitz_ , of course.

Her hand rests on the top of his arm before moving affectionately down, eventually settling against his palm. Fitz’s fingers curl over Jemma’s with assuring firmness. He lifts their clasped hands as though to buoy her spirits and it draws her attention, at last, away from the world trapped inside her cellphone. 

“Think I’m going to turn in for the night, Fitz. Thanks for dinner.” Her voice is unsteady and, pulling her hand free of his, she makes to leave immediately.

Fitz rises with her and catches her hand to stop her. “Jem,” he whispers, heavy with love and anguish and the urgent need to stop her from running away from it all. She falls back to him, finding comfort in his arms as waves of grief crash over her. He holds her steady. He holds her for a long time, until at last he feels her straighten up.

She gives herself space enough to look at him before leaning to place a grateful kiss to his check. Her face hovers near his until something impossible happens: he leans in to kiss _her_ – on the lips.

He pulls away quickly. There are apologies in his eyes that she’s never needed.

Jemma slides a hand through overgrown curls to draw him closer, guiding him back to her with easy confidence. She smiles again, her eyes still sparkling with tears, and it’s a tender invitation; a subtle lean closer gives him all the encouragement he needs.

Fitz kisses her so passionately she opens her eyes to check it's truly _her_ Fitz. It's as though a decade's worth of sexual frustration has been uncapped. There's something primal about it; perhaps, she considers, their new way of life has heightened their base instincts. She closes her eyes again, returning his fervent passion with plenty of her own and moving her hands over every part of him with joyous abandon.

"Fitz," she interrupts. "Fitz, I just... I need to warn you that I haven't shaved my legs or..." There's an unusual insecurity in her eyes that eludes him. 

Lightly, he says, "Neither have I."

The laugh that escapes her is so dreamy, so joyfully seductive that his lips move back to hers without hesitation. This feels so far from the idyllic, romantic picture in her mind. None of that seems to matter anymore. 

They make love as though it’s for the first time – the first time anybody’s done it the way it’s supposed to be done. They’ve spent years learning the outline of each other’s souls and coloring them in, carefully exploring each fraction of one another with devoted focus. It translates from metaphysical to physical, from soul to body, as though in perfect reverse of the world order. When he’s inside her, all order falls into a beautiful chaos; the only thing that remains the same is the elastic that pulls her heart to his.

All of the unsaid that’s gathered over years of neglect receives, at last, abundant clarification. The physical act of love blows away the dust and the cobwebs to reveal the truth of what’s always been sitting there. When Jemma looks at him, holding Fitz’s face in front of hers as he thrusts slowly inside her, her eyes are bold, uninterrupted by blinks or evasion. It’s not the first time she’s seen him look back at her like she hung the moon, but it’s the first time that she finds herself believing it. She watches a tear escape him, the overflow of feeling seeping from the very seams of him. 

When it’s over, Jemma lies languidly across him inside a half-open NASA sleeping bag with one hand idly stroking his chest, her body sated and her thoughts clouded by him. "This isn't how I imagined this happening," she confesses eventually, breaking an easy silence that seems to belong to someone else – not them, not non-stop, talkative Fitzsimmons. There’s a woeful undertone to her voice that Fitz tries to ignore, avoiding heartbreak as best he can.

He instead musters some bashful charm, replying, "So you've imagined this happening?"

 "Ever since the pod, I've just..." She looks at him pensively, struggling to articulate herself and finding no further aid in the anticipation stiffening his expression. "I was really looking forward to our date. Where were you gonna take me?"

 "Everywhere," he says like he's taking another breath. "I was thinking Italian. Safe. Too safe? Maybe it's boring."

 "I could never be bored with you, Fitz," she confesses, tears weighing down her eyelashes with conspicuous multitude. The drop of one runaway tear hits his skin with a cruel tickle, and he rushes to lend her a smile. “I love you, you know.”

His face brightens immeasurably, a laugh escaping him that reveals a joy so deep that she falls into it with him. Fitz leans to kiss her, a sweet, grateful peck to smiling lips. In the same move, he lets his hand sweep across her cheek and captures her tears with it.

“Before you question it, yes, I’m tired and dehydrated and hungry, but I’m also more sure of that than any scientific theory we’ve ever proven. And we’ve nailed a lot of scientific theories.”

“You’re not kidding. I believe you.” He raises his hands in surrender.

“Well, good.”

“Happy now?” It slips off his tongue flippantly but the smile she replies with is sincere.

 Jemma pulls herself up a little to hold his face and kiss him softly. “Yes. Miraculously, I am.”

“And Jemma, I love you too.”

 She moves her forehead to rest against his. “This is it then. Me and you.”

“Always has been. You and me.”

 Her hand brushes along the side of his face in one affectionate stroke as she pulls her head back to admire him. Gazing at Fitz beneath her, she’s entirely contained to this: their world, their moment.

 “Should get some rest,” he suggests, though it’s after a long, contented silence that he only reluctantly interrupts.

 Jemma nods before moving to cozy up against him, lying across his side with her hand flat against his chest and her head under his arm. “Goodnight Fitz.” 

He kisses places a kiss to the top of her head. “Goodnight Jemma.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I left you hanging for so long, but here at last is your next chapter! The final few are imminent as well, don't worry. Anyone who's coming back to this story now -- thank you for waiting. And thanks to all the kind people who've kudosed this in the months since I first posted.

**_3010 hours_ **

 

“Damn it, Fitz. What are we missing? If there’s a way in, there _has_ to be a way out,” Jemma bursts out suddenly, shattering an insufferable silence. She swipes her forearm over the notes in front of her in a momentary rage.

 “We’ll figure it out. We always do,” he assures her with a lame half-smile, his eyes not true to it.

 “We’ve been going over and over this research for two months and we’re still no closer to an answer.” Her uneven tone gives her away before she turns and lets him read her expression, but he’s there in an instance, at her side, holding her, soothing her with a gentle palm.

 “We could go for a walk. Get some food, some air.”

 Pulling away to look him in the eye, Jemma says firmly: “I want to go to the no-fly zone.”

 He draws in a breath. “We’ve been over this. It’s called the ‘no-fly zone’ for a reason and I don’t wanna find out what that reason is!”

 “ _I_ do! The answer might be there. Maybe we’re just wasting time here. I’m tired of sitting around and waiting. No one is coming to save us. We’ve been over everything in here and–”

 “No!”

 “–there could be something out there! Answers!”

 “We can find another way.” He’s begging now. It’s not forceful or angry, just desperate and sad and impossible to argue with.

 “You’ve given up,” she states with an accusatory tone.

 “I haven’t given up, I just…”

 Jemma starts to leave without waiting for his trailed-off sentence to lead somewhere. Helpless to stop at her this point short of physically impeding her, Fitz watches without comment. Before she’s out of sight, she reassuringly, though rather brusquely, calls back, “I’m going to find dinner.”

 Outside of the shelter, she’s wandering unsteadily over the dry ground. Picking up her pace despite the terrain, Jemma convinces herself that she’s heading further out of their normal range simply in the hope of a little variety – spice of life. Perhaps the root plants from a little further afield will have a little flavor to them. It’s purely coincidence that she’s heading in the direction of the ominous no-fly zone.

 Jemma sighs to herself as she pulls food from beneath the planet’s surface. “You know he means well. Make him dinner tonight and he’ll lighten up a little.” She pauses. “Then you should definitely stop talking to yourself.”

 She’s smiling again now, the no-fly zone slipping from the front of her mind as she imagines Fitz overhearing her, rolling his eyes with a smile. She half expects that he knows exactly what she’s thinking already, in an ESP kind of a way. He means well, and she’ll treat him to a sad, tasteless but somehow no less romantic meal to show him she understands. There’s something comfortingly domestic about her plan, she decides.

 It’s as she daydreams about after-dinner dessert that the sound of the wind whistling in the distance abruptly catches Jemma’s attention, interrupting heartening thoughts of Fitz. She begins to follow it, beckoned as though utterly unable to resist the pull of it.

 Almost in a daze, she comes across an assortment of odd artifacts laid out in the dusty, blue sand. Miraculously, there’s wine. A medieval sword. Astronomy equipment.

 She’s studying the astronomy equipment when it comes to her. “The stars. That’s the answer.”

 Before the notion even has chance to settle, the gentle whistle of the wind is swallowed by an echoing clap of thunder. It’s menacing and angry. Violent clouds of sand begin to move furiously closer, as if from nowhere.

 She’s running away desperately, but it catches up. The sand sweeps over her in a sheet, knocking her down a dune and into exactly the spot on the map that Fitz had begged her never to venture to. It’s something out of a nightmare. She can barely see, sand scratching at her eyes, but there are terrifying flashes: skeletons, the silhouette of a reaper closing in on her.

 She finds her feet after a struggle and scrambles to a run. It’s hard to get her bearings with the sand blocking out any clear line of vision until–

 “Jemma!”

 Her homing signal.

 He’s too loud for even the wind to intercept him. Or maybe it’s through ESP that she hears him, clear and crisp.

 “Fitz?!”

 “Jemma!” he calls out louder and closer, his voice ripping out of his throat. It’s terror and comfort all at once.

 She finally catches sight of him running valiantly towards her – in the wrong direction. “It’s coming!”

 They reach each other with such momentum that they slam together before Jemma can steady herself to pull him back. Quickly, she throws the shelter cover open as soon as she gets to it, pushes Fitz in first and then climbs inside behind him. As soon as she’s in, he uses the rope to pull the cover shut tight.

 Panting, Jemma’s spilling words out before he’s even turned back around: “Those journals! They were right! I saw it, whatever _it_ is! Something was out there!”

 Fitz, looking rather less surprised than she had expected, replies sharply, “I warned you never to go there!” Hands and voice shaking, he adds, “You could’ve been killed.”

 She swallows. “You knew… didn’t you? You went there? All those bones, proof of others and you didn’t tell me?”

 “I knew you’d want to come. I couldn’t… I couldn’t let you. I’m sorry. I had to investigate it for all the reasons you’ve been yelling at me since we found that map but I… had to go alone.”

 “No, you didn’t,” she spits back. “You didn’t have to go alone.”

 “Yes. I did.”

 “Stop trying to protect me!” She knows it’s too much to demand of him; Jemma knows him, so she attempts to appeal to that same, irrepressible part of him. “Hear this, Fitz: I am only gonna be okay if you are.” She steps a little closer, reaches a hand to tease his now-overgrown curls. “Every time you throw yourself into a black hole, or the sea, or this stupid bloody no-fly zone, that’s the person I love, that’s the person I _cannot_ live without who’s doing stupid, heroic, mostly stupid things. So, please, next time you’re planning stupid heroics,” she says, speaking softly as she wipes a tear from his eye, “don’t leave me behind.”

 “I’m sorry. It wasn’t fair but I just…”

 “I know.”

 He buries his face in her neck, hanging his head against her repentantly. Jemma’s hand threads gently through the back of his hair; it’s absent-minded and ordinary. There’s stillness in their little world for a moment, inside their underground shelter on whatever godforsaken planet they’ve ended up on.

 It’s a while before Jemma breaks their silence to say, rather a little too smugly, “Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore. I know how to get us home.”

When Fitz pulls his face away from her shoulder to study her expression, mystified, she adds a little nod of certainty as if to persuade him. There’s a twinkle in her eye.

_Home_.


	11. Chapter 11

**_3032 hours_ **

 

“This is where _we_ came in, this is where _NASA_ came in…” She’s leaning over the ragged old map with Fitz hovering beside her as she marks the page with an X and a Y and explains, “The monolith creates a wormhole, a direct line from its location on earth to a fixed location here.” 

Her meaning dawns on him before the words have escaped her. “The portal’s not moving–”

 “–the planet is! Or rather, rotating on its axis.”

“The portal is fixed.”

 “Exactly, Fitz! And since we know the date, time and place that we – and they,” she gestures in the direction of the astronaut helmet, “arrived, we know how long it took to move from X to Y. If we track the stars for long enough–”

 “–we can determine the rate of the planet’s rotation and predict when and where the portal will appear! Genius. Absolute genius,” he says, shaking his head in admiration before contributing his own little light bulb moment. “We can use the old NASA equipment to do it. We just need a–”

 “–power source! Yes. Do you reckon you can extract enough battery from this,” she dangles her scratched iPhone in front of him with a teasing grin, “to get the data we need?”

 Fitz stares awestruck at her, his eyes smiling before his lips. And then she’s waiting for a reaction, something more than wordless wonder. “Jemma…” In that single word, only her name, she hears him believe – for the first time, she realizes now – that they _will_ get home.

 She closes in on him with a grin fixed to her face. Broad and proud, a line marking ear to ear. Suddenly, she’s floating, giddy with it, and they’re jumping up and down with gleeful abandon, like children – or that moment of brilliance that once saved their lives at the bottom of the ocean. Now, though, he lifts her feet a little off the ground and places an assured kiss to her lips for her to deepen.

 When it’s over all too soon, he sloppily kisses her cheek and wraps her ever more tightly in a loving hug. “You’re amazing.”

 “Hugs later. Science now!”

 

  ** _3183 hours_**

 

Eventually, after endless tireless hours rewiring the mainframe and connecting it up to Jemma’s phone battery, Fitz manages to get the frustratingly dated computer to load up its Pathfinder operating system. It’s a brief moment of progress, offering relief as time wears away at even their renewed hope.

 The smile she gives him as the screen starts up will at least power him to the next morsel of progress.

 “We can do this,” she offers reassuringly. “Just… pretend it’s an exam.”

 He raises an eyebrow.

 “Worked before, right?”

 There are hours spent marking out symbols and examining patterns; it’s a workload shared but even so, it’s a struggle. Nothing at the academy quite compares to this test.

 Jemma falls asleep with her face resting on maps of stars and it’s Fitz who moves her, pulling a blanket up to her shoulders and positioning her sleeping head in his lap as he continues to work. One hand flips through pages, another absently caresses her hair.

 After Fitz himself falls asleep, he wakes to Jemma already occupied with the books, notes, star charts; everything’s laid out in a Simmons-typical organized mess.

 The cycle continues.

 Fitz is asleep when the old NASA computer’s quiet churning comes to an abrupt halt. The sudden and unusual sound of silence manages to wake him. His first instinct is to look for Jemma and, much to Fitz’s relief, his eyes quickly find her sat in front of him, pen in hand hurriedly writing markings onto the map.

 “Did it die?”

 “No, I just turned it off to save power,” she says, surprisingly chipper. Jemma turns to explain herself, looking at her bedhead boyfriend from across the underground bunker. “We’ve got one. There,” she points to a big, red marking on her beloved map.

 “Oh, did it have to be there?” he moans, groggy still from his sudden wake-up. “The no-fly zone? _Really_? That’s a 40-hour hike, at least… There’s a canyon 30 meters wide. It’s impossible to cross, Jemma. I don’t think we can make it,” Fitz points out dejectedly.

 “Someone woke up on the wrong side of their camp bed today, didn’t they?” she teases. “We can make it, Fitz. Me and you eat impossible for breakfast. But listen, there’s a little more battery left. Let’s see if we can identify another one before we set out.”

 

**_3561 hours_ **

 

“It’s not random.”

 “No,” she says, smiling on cue. “On earth it seemed to open randomly but it only _appears_ random from our point of view.”

 Fitz is smiling to himself as he finishes off the last of the missile device. He’s not really doing much of anything with it anymore; he completed it before they left the shelter, but his hands need to be occupied. She’s in full Science Simmons flow so he just listens, rather blissfully.

 “It’s the moons. Their degree of alignment affects the portal the way our moon affects the tides, causing it to ebb and flow, pulling things in and out.”

 “And when the portal opens, we just… jump through? How do we know we’ll end up on Earth?”

 Quieter, she replies, “We don’t.”

 “Okay. What if – and I don’t want to assume the worst here, but let’s prepare for all eventualities… What if it doesn’t stay open long enough for us to get across?”

 “That’s what this guy is for,” she explains, giving his newly configured missile a couple of taps. “We send a message in a bottle. We include everything the team needs to know to open it, keep it open and come and get us.”

 He looks from his not-so-shiny new invention to Jemma, and then to the dusty empty bottle she reveals from her bag.

 “What did you think you were building it for?”

 Fitz pouts a little before defending himself. “I designed it to send over a grappling hook. I’m gonna shoot it into the wall across the canyon. We’ll have to… slide across on the rope,” he finishes, his face a little greener than it was at the start of his sentence.

 “Fitz, I… We didn’t even make it through basic training.”

 He throws his hands up. “What? Did you think I was gonna build a helicopter to get us across?”

 “Well… kind of.”

 “There wasn’t time!”

 “Listen, I don’t think hurling ourselves across a canyon is going to be conducive to a safe rescue. Is it still called a rescue if we save ourselves? _Self-rescue_ ,” Jemma corrects herself. “Whatever. We need to use the device to send the message into the portal. We’ll use the second portal reading that we got as our chance. It’s not quite a certainty, but it is a more accessible location. Away from the no-fly zone.” She watches him nod his agreement. “Ticks all the boxes.”

 They begin quibbling over what to say in the message. There’s so much to say and the inclination to share personal anecdotes over real information is overwhelming. Two moons and a lot of sex, after all.

 “Do you think I should tell them we’re a couple?”

 Fitz looks up.

 “No. Right. I’ll stick to the essentials. I just wanted them to know, in a funny way.” She blinks away tears. “Even if we don’t get back, I just… want them to know how things ended up, me and you. We never got to tell anyone. I want to see their faces and roll my eyes as they say things like, ‘We knew all along!’ and I hate that maybe we won’t get that.” 

“We’ll tell them in person,” Fitz reassures her with a meek smile.

 Jemma pretends to be convinced with a muted, “Yeah.”

 “And drive them all mad,” he continues.

 “Yeah.”

 “And do it on the holotable.”

 “Yeah.” Her head shoots up. “Wait– what? Are these the kind of fantasies you’ve been having?”

“I’m just throwing things at the wall, seeing what sticks.”

 “Fitz, if you think that’s a good idea, you’ve clearly forgotten some of the functions you’ve built into that tech.” She watches him consider that for a minute, laughing as panic breaks across his face. “Come on, focus.”

 The plan they’ve come up with relies on Daisy more than anyone, so Simmons comes to reason that any personal news would probably serve as an unhelpful distraction. She returns her attention to the message.

 “Everything the team needs to know to get us home,” she tells herself.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One more to go after this. I hope you enjoy.

**_3575 hours_ **

 

They’re walking together with the contented ease of a stroll in the park, the kind of strolls they used to go on when an experiment needed a little tweak and they were all out of inspiration.

 Everything about them is effortless – even in hell, it’s heaven. Fitz smiles at Jemma when he thinks she’s not looking; he takes her hand sporadically and easily. It happens as they move closer together in stride and tends to last until one of them trips on uneven ground, and the cycle begins again.

 “What are you gonna do first?” Fitz asks cheerfully.

 “When we get back?” She looks ahead thoughtfully before grinning at him. “I’m gonna eat in the shower and fall asleep while doing it.”

 He gives a dry laugh. “Very practical. Can I join you?”

 Jemma’s eyebrows shoot up before she laughs. “Oh, Fitz,” she says fondly. “We’re gonna be worse than ever when we get back, aren’t we?”

 “What do you mean?” he protests.

 Jemma’s laughing still. “ _Well_ ,” she begins, elongating the vowel, “we’ll be inseparable. More so than before.” She goes a little coy in the silence. “Of course I want to get home and I miss everyone. This place is… hell. For a thousand reasons. But sometimes the fact that it’s just our world here… I’ve grown used to it being the two of us, you know? …Us and that death monster, but still.”

 He doesn’t make up an excuse to hold her hand, he just does. It’s not a gentle brushing of fingers against fingers. He holds it tight. “Nothing’s gonna come between us, Jem. Besides, I reckon we’ve earned some holiday. We could go away together, maybe go home for a bit.”

 “That’d be nice.”

 “I’ll treat you to an ice-cream if you’re lucky.”

 “Oh, you know how to spoil a girl,” she replies. “Mint chocolate chip for me.”

 “I know.” He rolls his eyes exaggeratedly, then he shoots a sly glance her way to check she’s smiling.

 They keep walking. And walking.

 The added gravitational pull makes every step heavier and there’s little food to counter the exertion. By the time they arrive at their unfavorable destination, it feels as though they’ve travelled the entire planet’s circumference twice over.

 Side by side at the edge of the precipice, they stare at the horrifying void that lies in front of them. No portal yet. It’s bigger than they had foreseen. Their maps did little to provide an accurate scale. Either that, or it’s grown larger since the NASA astronauts stopped recording the information.

 Jemma shakes her head furiously. “This can’t be it. We made a mistake. We went the wrong way.”

 He’s unusually quiet. The cogs are turning, his brain scanning through theorems and test scenarios and every possible solution.

 “It was supposed to be 30 meters wide. That’s more like 100 meters. Can we even get a long enough range for this shot?”

 Her eyes fix on him, desperate and impatient and he has to offer her something. “I can do it. I’ll make some adjustments and it’ll… it’ll get there.”

 She switches to a nod at that, easily placated. Because it’s Fitz. He’ll come through.

 Jemma watches on as the relevant alterations are made, chiming in with her own suggestions every now and then. It’s his area of expertise, of course, but he welcomes her input, quickly making the amends she suggests without argument. They haven’t much time, nor the chance for a trial run.

 He’s barely looked up from his amended work when the portal begins to form, exactly at the moment she had predicted – not that they have time to marvel at that detail.

 Jemma’s calling to him, urging him to act. “Hurry. We’ve only got one shot.”

 Fitz fumbles with the device in his hand, eventually getting it steady enough to send the shot across the canyon.

 “Now!”

 Almost at the precise moment his finger pulls the trigger to send the message in a bottle on its course, the portal begins shrinking, shriveling to a small pool before they’ve even had time to blink.

 The bottle moves through the air like it’s in slow motion, the portal still moving at warp speed by comparison.

 “Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on…” she whispers desperately.

 Jemma takes in a sharp breath.

 The message makes it.

  _Just_.

 They watch the portal evaporate, still as statues.

 There’s a long, tense pause before Jemma suddenly breathes out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, tension and tears spilling out of her with it. She moves to Fitz, her hand reaching gently to his shoulder as though to steady them both. Neither seems to know whether to be overjoyed or heartbroken, but they touch like they have no intention of ever letting go.

 As though desperate for secondary contact, Fitz moves a hand to her waist but it’s a full hug before they know it. Tears get buried in it as he sweeps his fingers through her hair. He kisses the arch of her neck as she hides her face in his shoulder.

 “What if we never make it home Fitz?” she asks him, quiet and muffled, as though not wanting the cruel universe to overhear her. Or perhaps not really wanting him to answer.

 “Then… this is our home.”

 “This isn’t a home. This is hell.” She lets her tears soak into his shirt before pulling away to look him in the eye. “You don’t deserve this.”

 Fitz pulls her close again, kisses her temple and replies, simple and serene, “ _You_ are my home.”

 She pulls her face away to stare, awestruck by his strength now, by his calm and his confidence. Jemma feels a pang of love so intense that it knocks a fresh wave of tears out of her, but she’s not looking for comfort, or soothing, or appeasement. Her gaze moves from his eyes to his lips, and there’s no time at all before she closes in, landing a firm, passionate kiss of intent on those lips.

 Her hands follow swiftly and rush to cradle his face, encouraging and affectionate and desperate. They start off gently brushing over the sides of his face but move through his hair, mussing his curls as she pulls him to her.

Between kisses, she whispers breathlessly, “I love you.”


	13. Chapter 13

**_4720 hours_ **

 

“Jemma, are you ready?”

 “Relax,” she says breezily, “we’re not going to miss it. I’m the one who did the maths, remember.”

 Jemma’s using the astronaut helmet as a mirror when he finds her; she’s in the middle of putting her necklace on, the one her parents gave her when she graduated – the second time. There’s a warm, easy smile on her face now and it broadens when she notices him looking at her. It’s a comfortable spotlight.

 Fitz moves to help fasten her necklace without a word. Warmly, he lifts her hair over the chain before wrapping an arm around her waist.

 “Hello.”

 “Hello,” she replies brightly. “You needn’t worry. Even if we do miss it, we’ll have plenty of chances soon enough.” She turns inside his embrace to face him, hooks an arm around his neck and gives Fitz a warm kiss.

 “Shall we go?” he suggests, reaching out to hand her one of the flasks that she’s laid out in preparation.

 Jemma kisses him again, this time on the cheek.

 “Yep,” she says with a smile.

 Her eyes scan their underground shelter one last time before returning her gaze to the astronaut helmet hanging on the wall. Quietly, she whispers, “Thank you,” before taking Fitz’s hand and letting him lead her towards the hatch.

 They set out in plenty of time, following the astronauts’ map out to a higher area of land about a mile from their base. It’s less of a trial than their last excursion and follows a more safe and scenic route, but they’re uneasy enough that they stay glued to each other’s side throughout the journey.

 Eventually they arrive at the place marked out on the map.

 “Pretty good spot for a sunrise,” Fitz says, looking at their surroundings and settling down on the ground next to his best friend, his girlfriend, his partner. There are miles of barren dessert stretching out ahead of them, but there’s something phenomenal about it now; it’s less threatening now that the prospect of escape has become real.

 “I’ll say. Oh, but–”

 “What?”

 “You’ll have to be careful, Fitz. I didn’t pack any sunscreen.”

 “Very funny, Simmons,” he says, a little bitterly. He’s too charmed for it to really sting. “It’s only going to last a few minutes. We’re on one of the poles.”

 She appeases him effortlessly by reaching out to brush her fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck and shooting him another bright smile. He’s weak. And suddenly he remembers, “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

 He roots around in his bag before revealing an extremely dusty bottle.

 “Is that the wine from the graveyard? You went back for it?” She laughs, and then pauses suddenly for a shift in tone. “You went back for it? Are you mad? What were you thinking? You could’ve been killed – for a bottle of wine!”

 “You said, and I quote, ‘I’d kill for a glass of wine.’”

 “I didn’t mean I’d kill _you_ for one, Fitz. Bloody hell!”

 “I thought you’d like it.”

 She softens again. “Sorry… I do. I just like you more. And you promised no more stupid, brave stuff on your own. Now that it’s here, we might as well crack it open and toast.”

 Fitz pulls the cork and pours the bottle evenly between two tin cups that Jemma holds out for him.

 “What do you want to toast to?” he asks, taking his cup from her.

 “To no more risking your life.”

 “How binding is a toast?”

 Jemma rolls her eyes.

 “Okay, what about… to home?”

 She nods. “To home.”

 They chink their cups together and take a sip, beaming contentedly at each other for only the briefest of moments. About as soon as the old, old wine hits their tongues, they spit out their mouthfuls into the cups in unison.

 “Oh my god! That’s horrible!”

 “I risked my life _for_ _that_!” Fitz exclaims with deep offense.

 Screwing up her face, she adds, “That is pure vinegar.”

 “With a medicinal aftertaste, somehow.”

 They start laughing together. It’s physical and uncontrollable, and they’re laughing as the sun comes up around them. It covers all that they can see in a warm glow, illuminating the dirt and the fatigue on their faces but somehow not letting it overshadow the beauty and the strength beneath. They lean in to kiss, smiling at each other’s lips before making contact.

 Jemma’s cup spills and falls from her hand as Fitz deepens their kiss once again, tongues touching and hands roaming, and the warmth of the sun on their skin adding the illusion of being transported away from this cold, dark hell.

 As she pulls away, Jemma’s eyes open again just in time to watch the sun fading away in the distance.

 She stands suddenly, leaving Fitz just looking up.

 “It should be here… it should be here…”

 “It will be. We just have to wait a little longer,” he assures her, finding his feet to stand beside her. “You’re never wrong, Jemma.”

 “I was wrong. My calculations… It turned off before I could falsify this one. It’s really just guesswork and I guessed wrong. Or I didn’t explain clearly enough what they needed to do, what Daisy needed to do…” 

Fitz starts to open his mouth to offer words of support, but before a sound leaves his tongue, something in the distance catches his eye.

 The portal.

 It’s opening still, getting wider and wider and causing a sandstorm around it.

 Instinctively, Fitz and Jemma start running towards it. Running like they’ve never run before. Running like they’re sprinting the Marathon Des Sables. Running, running,

running and not looking back.

 “We can make it!”

 Jemma leads the way, trusting him to stay on her heel.

 The density of the sand builds and builds, making it impossible to see a thing. They know where to run only because of the pressure the portal gives off; it’s like running against the force of a repelling magnet.

 Unable to see Fitz all of a sudden, though, she calls out crisp and sharp, “Fitz! Don’t lose me! Fiiiiitz!”

 She doesn’t see him reappear but he finds her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers to reassure her.

 “Don’t let go,” she cries out to him, with barely a breath to exhale her relief.

 They continue running hand-in-hand, fighting every physical force that wants to send them back to hell. It’s something superhuman that pushes them ahead, something beyond bone and muscle and anything secular. Their latent superpower is love, love, love, that insurmountable endless kind of love.

 They push further, they push closer.

 Thunder rumbles threateningly in the background, the landscape itself seeming to turn on them once again. Jemma is only looking ahead. She doesn’t think about the ground beneath her, its mounds and ditches just waiting to catch them out. Or rather, not _them_. Fitz.

 The first she knows of it is his hand ripping out of hers as she’s mid-stride, throwing herself forward and unable to stop quick enough to hold on. When she does stop, he’s hidden by thick clouds of dust.

 “Fiiiiitz!” she calls out. It rips out deep from the very base of her. She’s turning and turning and desperately turning, looking for any sign of him. Instead of him, though, another figure appears in front of her, moving in.

 She’s staring at it, calculating…

 An astronaut, dressed in that same suit as the ones who’d left all of their equipment in the shelter. “They came back?” she asks herself, her own good sense then beginning to add things up. It comes clearer and clearer into view and she realizes then what she’s seeing. “Oh god. It’s here!”

 She wants to run but Fitz isn’t with her anymore and she’s directionless. She searches around her, but the opaque smog make it impossible. There’s noise too; barely anything can be heard above wind and thunder, until – faintly – her name.

 “Jemma!” she hears again, and Fitz is there before she knows it. He catches her in his momentum, grabbing her hand tightly and running frantically forward. He pulls her along with him until she finds her own stride once more and they’re throwing themselves towards that portal.

 Just a few more steps. They can see it. Close and open.

 Just a few more steps and then–

****

**_4722 hours_ **

 

There’s a thick shower of ash and dust moving through the air of what appears to be an old castle crypt, looking for a place to settle. A layer of black covers them over until Jemma shifts a little to reveal the lines of their bodies entangled.

 Wide-eyed and weak, she lifts her head above the dark veil of ash to take a breath. It’s a breath she’s waited six months for. She looks down then to see him, her Fitz, lying unconscious in her arms.

 She moves to gently brush her hand over his skin to clear the dirt from his face.

 “We did it,” she whispers into his ear. “We’re home.”

 There’s nothing from him.

 “Fitz. _Fitz_.” She shakes him a little but he doesn’t stir. The last time he’d ever looked so still, it was the worst nine days of her life; there’s a stabbing pain in her chest at just the memory. A beat passes; it is a long, stretching eternity. “Fitz,” she repeats, barely above a squeak, her lips to his ear. “Just… wake up now. We did it. _Fitz_.”

 She kisses his temple delicately before moving her forehead to rest there.

 “Jemma,” he breathes out.

 “You scared me,” she says in a sigh, her hands fussing all over him and not settling anywhere exactly.

 There’s quiet as the dust in the air begins to clear, and over the top of the shallow well familiar faces begin to appear. Their team circle them: a relieved, almost crying Daisy, Mack nodding firmly like he knew they’d get back all along, Bobbi and Hunter comforting each other, Coulson’s eyes closing in relief and May, giving her emotions away just a little. They all look like they’ve just seen a ghost – or two.

 “Jemma…”

 “Yeah,” she says, offering a smile.

 “Are you free for dinner tonight? Me and you, maybe we could eat somewhere… somewhere nice,” he says, his voice so hoarse she can hardly make it out.

 Jemma gives a teary giggle, her hand brushing affectionately through his hair like she holds, in her hands, the most precious thing in the world. Tears slip from her eyes but they’re matched with a bright smile, her white teeth contrasting with the dark soot covering her skin. 

“That sounds good,” she replies, nodding, before placing a warm kiss to his lips.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who stuck with this all the way! I really hope you enjoyed it - and sorry it took me so long to get the ending to you. Thanks for every kudos and comment, too; it's the most kudos I've ever received for a fic, so I'm thrilled and amazed. 
> 
> By the way, if you enjoyed this and fancy reading more of my writing, it seems the perfect time of year to bring my **[12 Days of Fitzsimmons Christmases](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5417540/chapters/12517226)** story to your attention. I wrote it last year but it's still canon compliant, and a heavy dose of festive warm and fuzzies. 
> 
> Thanks again for reading!


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